Icon-A-Day, Icon # 66, User Program Group
One last fling for the "little people."
Monday, March 7, 2005 by mormegil | Discussion: Icons
| Icon 66 (User Program Group) Yesterday we had the pleasure of making the "Program Group" folder. This makes today's icon very simple and gives us one last chance to use the "People" overlay that we originally made for the Admin folder. Today's icon is another one of those icons that most people will never see. There are system administrators out there who see it every day, and beside, it is supported by IconPackager, so to do a complete pack we have to do it. | ||
| Step 1: We shall start with a copy of yesterdays Program Group folder. .jpg) |
Step 2: Now we copy the "People" from our Admin folder, and shrink them down a bit, also we remove the shadows and Reflections. .jpg) |
Step 3: We lean the people up against the Explorer window. Then we copy our elements and make our reflection graphics. .jpg) |
| Step 4: Now we add a drop shadow. to the "People" and feather out the Reflection with the Interactive Transparency tool. .jpg) |
Finished Icon design. |
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Well that was simple; unfortunately we are running out of the simple folder icons, I am hoping to finally get around to the "Printer" folder tomorrow. See you then. | ||
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03-05-05 Highlights at Skinartistry
Written by Old Sapphire
Monday, March 7, 2005 by Skinartistry | Discussion: OS Customization
A weekly article to summarize what's goin on at Skinartistry, and what's hot.
Main Attraction
Skin: Reciprocity
Type: Windowblind
Author: pictoratus
Website: http://www.pictoratus.com/
Email: pictoratus@pictoratus.com
I love a skin with lots of flare, eye candy, tricks, flaming hoola-hoops, and all other what-have-you's - but sometimes, all of the do-hickeies and widgets can get to be somewhat irritating, redundant, and often are overdone. When I'm suffering from skin overload, I want something to calm my nerves a bit, and keep things simple, but not too simple. That's exactly what I find with Reciprocity. This skin is simple, sleek, and modern - and surprsingly easy on the eyes. The color does a lot of things for the skin: it adds some interest and flash, and really brings out many darker-schemed websites and highlights them well. Don't be turned off by the color - it's minty freshness is comfortable and unique.
It's difficult to decide whether to consider this minimal or not - the start menu is compact and simple, and the window buttons are kind and dainty, yet you still get that gently fattening feel as you would from a normal skin.
Whether you're looking to satisfy your favorite color fetish, try something new, keep it 'minimal', but not too minimal, or just want to wear something comfortable and sheik- Reciprocity should be the first choice on your list.
"Cool Stuff" Highlights
from all around the net
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Worth Checking Out
old & new stuff
What is Avalon
Microsoft's next-gen display system explained
Sunday, March 6, 2005 by Draginol | Discussion: Avalon
Avalon is the new rendering and compositing technolgoy that Microsoft is developing primarily for Longhorn (Microsoft's next release of Windows) that is available in beta form on Windows XP as I write this.
From Windows 3.0 all the way through Windows XP, the Windows graphical environment was pretty primitive. The Graphical Device Interface (GDI) provided only limited visual options to developers.
As 3D hardware has improved, the gulf between what developers could do with traditional Windows programs versus what one could see in a PC game grew more and more obvious.
Avalon is designed to bridge that gap. It provides two things of particular interest:
(1) It delivers a new rendering and compositing model that developers can take advantage of. This new model can make use of the latest/greatest advances in video hardware (such as 3D). That doesn't mean one must use it to create "3D" looking programs but rather it means that all kinds of impressive visual effects become possible.
(2) It provides a new programming model that allows software developers to create user interfaces that are defined declaratively (such as created via XAML).
(Editorial on)
Everything else you hear about Longhorn is mostly just fluff. It's really about Avalon. Without Avalon, there's not much point to Longhorn in my view.
The reason for that is not because people want eye candy but because we are currently moving towards a video stand-still.
Consider this, modern LCD displays can display at 1600x1200. But many people don't bother to run at the highest resolution their monitor can display because "everything gets too small". That's because fonts and other elements in Windows are at a static DPI (96 dpi to be precise).
Avalon's compositer allows you to use the full potential of your display. Increase your resolution as much as you can and then adjust the size of everything on the fly. Instead of bitmaps and hard coded font sizes, you have vector based interfaces that simply become more detailed, more defined as you increase the DPI. Same for fonts.
So the user running at say 3200 x 2400 in 2008 isn't greeted with tiny text and tiny UI. Their UI is whatever size that is comfortable for the user with it being sharp and detailed (Rather than scaled up with fuzzyness).
The compositing engine will allow for far for interesting ways to display information on the screen. Right now, developers are limited in how they can display things on screen by the graphics sub-system. When people saw the Dock on MacOS X with its "genie" effect, PC users oohed and awed. That sort of thing is just the tip of the iceberg. That's just eye candy.
With XAML, developers will be able to put together sophisticated, visually appealing programs quickly and easily that tap into Avalon. This could create user interfaces that are designed to meet the user's needs much more easily than what we have today.
(editorial mode off)
Icon-A-Day, Icon # 65, Program Group Folder
Not as simple as I planed it to be.
Sunday, March 6, 2005 by mormegil | Discussion: Icons
| Icon 65 (Program Group) I wanted to do another simple icon today, but it turned out a bit more of a project then I had expected. So here we go, lets make a Programs Folder. | ||
| Step 1: We will start with a copy of our Active X folder. I remove the X and its shadow and reflection. .jpg) |
Step 2: Now I want to make a little Explorer Window with some programs in it. So I draw the simple shapes with boxes. .jpg) |
Step 3: I take those boxes and group them, then I slant them back against the folder with the perspective tool. .jpg) |
| Step 4: Now I take some new boxes and with the Mesh tool start going over the title bar area of my Explorer window. I give it the same sort of look we are using on the folders. .jpg) |
Step 5: You can see here that I end up with 5 Mesh fill objects, "Skinning" my Explorer window. .jpg) |
Step 6: Now I copy a few of my earlier icons and make a sort of "List View" to go in the icon area of the Explorer window.
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| Step 4: To save a bit of time I convert my new "List View" Into a bitmap. Using The Bitmap Effects I give it a bit of perspective. Then I tweak it a bit with size and skew to make it fit in the icon Area. .jpg) |
Step 4: To polish off our Explorer Window I give it 3 Command buttons and some boxes to flesh out the Shellstyle area. I also give the frame of the window some texture, copied from the folder. Last I give the Window a little Gloss. .jpg) |
Step 4: I don't think it is showing up well, so I go back in with the Mesh tool and darken some of the colors for a bit more contrast. I also give the icon our standard Reflection. .jpg) |
| Step 4: To finish up we go in and give the new Explorer window a nice drop shadow. .jpg) |
Finished Icon design. |
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Well, that's one more folder down, tomorrow we will try and finish up another. See ya then. | ||
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Icon-A-Day, Icon # 64, Workgroup
The last of the "Other" Icons.
Saturday, March 5, 2005 by mormegil | Discussion: Icons
| Icon 64 (Workgroup) Well, I spent all day moving so I am quite beat, but luckily there is a pretty simple icon that needs to be done. I'm in luck. This is the last of the icons in the "Other" section of IconPackager; we will have the satisfaction finishing up anther section. So lets do it. | ||
| Step 1: We will start by copying yesterdays "Entire Network" icon, and removing the globe and cable, as well as the reflections. .jpg) |
Step 2: Now since this is a "workgroup" I want to ad one more computer. So I copy the front computer, and put a new picture on it. In this case a copy of our globe. .jpg) |
Step 3: Now I size the new monitor down a bit, and place it behind the two monitors. I also give the new one a bit of Gloss on its screen. .jpg) |
| Step 4: Now we give the monitors a new reflection. I copy the two front most monitors and mirror them for our Reflections. .jpg) |
Step 5: Using the Interactive Transparency tool, I I fade out the two reflection bitmaps. See the Reflections Video for more on this. .jpg) |
Finished Icon design.
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There we go, one more lose end tied up. I will be doing more moving tomorrow so we will be doing another simple icon tomorrow night as well. Not sure which one yet. | ||
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Icon-A-Day, Icon # 63, Entire Network
This one is really the last of the "Network" Icons.
Friday, March 4, 2005 by mormegil | Discussion: Icons
| Icon 63 (Entire Network) Since it is Friday night, and I have just gotten home from a nice date with my beautiful wife, I am going to once again cheap out and do another simple icon. Yesterday we did the Network Services icon, today we will finish off once and for all the "Network" icons by doing the Entire Network icon. This icon used to be more important, but you almost never see it anymore, unless you poke around in your My Network Places folder for a bit. But it is supported, and therefore we need to take care of it. I like to do this one as a few computers, and a globe, this is to represent that the entire network can consist of just about any size of network, form a LAN to the entire Internet. Having said that, lets do it. | ||
| Step 1: To start with I will simply copy the My Network Places icon. .jpg) |
Step 2: Now I copy the monitor, flip it, and remove the shadows and the screen image and gloss. .jpg) |
Step 3: Now I copy our "Bliss" like image form our my Pictures folder, and use it as our wallpaper for this monitor. I also give the monitor some new gloss. .jpg) |
| Step 4: Now we make a new shadow for the monitor, with the shadow falling off to the left, to match our other objects. .jpg) |
Step 5: Now I take the original monitor from the Network Places icon and size it down a bit, and place it in front of the new monitor. .jpg) |
Step 6: I move the globe and cable back in front, and make sure it will fit. I tweak the cable a bit to make it longer. .jpg) |
| Step 7: Now we forgot to make a new reflection for the front monitor, so I move the globe away again, and give it a nice new reflection. .jpg) |
Step 8: Now I move the globe back, and clip the cable a bit to make it look like it is going behind the front monitor. .jpg) |
Finished Icon design. .jpg) |
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That was pretty simple. I used to spend a lot more time on this icon in the old days, but now I seam to have settled on this formula. It works well and conveys the meaning I want. Besides, how often will it be seen? | ||
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Icon-A-Day, Icon # 62, Network Service
Loose ends.
Thursday, March 3, 2005 by mormegil | Discussion: Icons
| Icon 62 (Network Services) Yesterday I said I would be be doing the Printer icon tonight. However I am running late today do to the fact that I am in the process of moving over the next week or so. So tonight I am going to cheap out and take care of some lose edges. A while back we did a series of network icons, now that we are getting closer to the end of the pack I realized that we skipped a few. The first of these is the Network Services icon. | ||
| Step 1: Lets start by copying the Internet icon. .jpg) |
Step 2: Now I size the globe down and tweak the cable to make it stretch further around the edge of the icon area. .jpg) |
Step 3: Now we take a copy of the gear from the admin folder and place it in front of the globe. .jpg) |
| Step 4: Now using our reflection techniques I give the gear a new reflection. .jpg) |
Step 5: Now using the Shadows techniques I give the gear the new shadow. .jpg) |
Finished Icon design. .jpg) |
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Well, I still want to get to the printer icon, hopefully we will be able to take care of it tomorrow. | ||
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Icon-A-Day, Icon # 61, Subscription Folder
lets polish off the obscure folders.
Wednesday, March 2, 2005 by mormegil | Discussion: Icons
| Icon 61 (Subscription Folder) As we move through the rest of the folder icons, there are a few obscure icons left, one of which is the Subscription Folder icon. So I thought we would get it taken care of tonight. | ||
| Step 1: We will start with by copying the web folder, and removing the globe and cord. .jpg) |
Step 2: Now we are use a few circles and triangles to make a "sync" symbol. .jpg) |
Step 3: Now using the Perspective tool, we lean the symbol against the folder. .jpg) |
| Step 4: Now with the contour tool we do a "poor mans bevel". See the contour video for more on this. .jpg) |
Step 5: Once more using the contour tool we fade the inside of the symbol to a lighter green. .jpg) |
Step 6: Now we quickly give the symbol a little gloss. .jpg) |
| Step 4: Now using our Reflection Techniques I give the symbol a reflection. .jpg) |
Step 5: Now using our Shadow Techniques I give the symbol a shadow. .jpg) |
Completed Icon Image. .jpg) |
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Tomorrow we will tackle the Printers folder, which will be a bit of work. So check in then. | ||
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Icon-A-Day, Icon # 60, Scheduled Tasks Folders
lets use our clock on last time.
Tuesday, March 1, 2005 by mormegil | Discussion: Icons
| Icon 60 (Scheduled Tasks Folder) Today we will once more re-use our clock from the last two days. We will need a new Calendar graphic, but other than that we have everything we need already. | ||
| Step 1: First thing is to copy the Admin Folder and remove everything but one gear, and the folder itself. .jpg) |
Step 2: Now using a series of boxes we make a simple calendar. .jpg) |
Step 3: Now I fill in the cells of the calendar, with some colors to make it look more "calender-ish". I also Group it, and use the Perspective tool to lean it on the folder. .jpg) |
| Step 4: Now I move the calendar inside the folder. I then copy the Checkbox from the Folder Options icon and shrink it a bit, and set it in front of our folder. .jpg) |
Step 5: Now we copy our clock one last time and place it in front of the folder, but behind the checkbox. .jpg) |
Completed Icon Image. .jpg) |
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This should be the last of the "clock" icons, at least the ones I can think of at the moment. Tomorrow we will finish off another folder. | ||
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Icon-A-Day, Icon # 59, Recent Documents Folder
Let us reuse our clock form yesterday.
Monday, February 28, 2005 by mormegil | Discussion: Icons
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Icon 59 (Recent Documents)
Yesterday while we were doing the URL History folder we made a nice clock face. Today we will use it, as well as some elements from past icons to make a new one with only one new graphic. |
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Step 1: First thing we do is copy the My Documents folder, and remove the file and pen. .jpg)
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Step 2: Now we take our clock, and its reflection and shadows from the URL History folder. .jpg)
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Step 3: Now we will make our one new element and create a new reflection of the folder. Using our Reflection Techniques. .jpg)
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Step 4: Now we move our clock in front of our folder. .jpg)
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Step 5: For our finishing touch we copy the pen from our RTF File icon, and place it on the floor in front of the folder. .jpg)
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Completed Icon Image..jpg)
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Well, I thinkwe will find more uses for our clock as we move though the latter half of our pack. Check back in tomorrow to see what's next. |
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